Are solar panels worth it in the UK in 2026?
For a household at home during the day, on a good export tariff, with a quote at or below the median price — yes, comfortably. For an empty house on a poor export rate, the arithmetic does not support it, and no amount of enthusiasm changes that. Here is how to tell which one you are.
Worth it for whom, is the only version of this question that has an answer.
The arithmetic turns on a single split: electricity you use as it is generated saves you about 26p a unit; electricity you export earns between about 4p and 12p.
So:
- Home during the day, good export tariff, median-priced quote — payback around twelve years on a system that should run for decades. Comfortably worth it.
- Out all day, no storage, median export rate — payback beyond twenty years. On the numbers alone, hard to justify.
- Anywhere in between — the table below tells you which row you are on.
Nothing about the technology is in doubt. What varies is your household.
The numbers, for a standard system
A 4 kWp array at the median installed price, on a median-sunshine location:
| Self-consumption | Value a year at 12.0p export | Payback | Value a year at 4.1p export | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14% | £479 | 13.3 years | £246 | 25.9 years |
| 19% | £503 | 12.7 years | £284 | 22.5 years |
| 23% — home all day, no battery | £522 | 12.2 years | £314 | 20.3 years |
| 40% | £604 | 10.6 years | £442 | 14.4 years |
| 60% | £701 | 9.1 years | £593 | 10.8 years |
Cost from Solar photovoltaic (PV) cost data, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2025/26 median for the 0-4 kW band; at the mean instead (£7,234) every payback figure is about 13% longer. Generation is our own PVGIS modelling, south-facing at 35°, median of 25 UK locations. Self-consumption rates 14/19/23% are MGD 003 archetypes without storage; 40% and 60% are shown because storage or an EV can reach them. Export rates are the best and median open untied rates in our SEG table. Simple payback only — no degradation, no inverter replacement, no maintenance, and no change in electricity prices.
Two things to take from that grid.
The technology is not the variable. The same panels, the same roof, the same price — and payback moves by fifteen years across the rows. What moves is the household and the tariff.
The 23% row is the honest default for a household without storage: MCS’s guidance puts a home-all-day household at 23%, in half the day at 19%, out all day at 14%.
What tips it towards yes
Somebody home during the day. Retired, working from home, small children, shift work — any of these raises self-consumption, and self-consumption is the whole ball game.
A battery. MGD 003’s tables show self-consumption rising from 23% to around 37% at 1.1–2.1 kWh of usable capacity and around 50% at 3.1–4.1 kWh, for the household archetype we model. That is a large change to the value of the same array. Whether the battery pays for itself is a separate question, and one we will treat properly when we have a cost source for storage as good as the one we now have for panels.
An electric vehicle charged at home in daylight.
A heat pump. MGD 003 explicitly excludes non-typical loads — heat pumps, EVs, electric water heating, power diverters — from its self-consumption method. So its figures are likely conservative for those households, though the guidance does not say by how much.
A good export tariff, which is free. The gap between the best and median open untied rates in our table is worth years of payback on its own.
A quote at or below the median price per kW.
What tips it towards no
An empty house on weekdays, with no storage and no plan to add any.
A poor export tariff you cannot leave — some are tied to a supply contract.
A roof that generates poorly. North-facing, heavily shaded, or very shallow. The arithmetic above starts with generation, and if generation is 40% lower everything else follows — see north-facing roofs and shading.
A roof near the end of its life. Fix that first, or budget for removing and refitting the array — the costs outside the headline.
A quote well above the mean with no explanation for the difference.
A short time horizon. If you expect to move within a few years, payback is not your frame — the question becomes what the installation does to the sale, and we do not have trustworthy UK evidence on that either way.
Every solar sales conversation eventually reaches “and electricity prices will keep going up”.
They might. If they do, everything on this page improves, because the units you avoid buying become more valuable. That is a genuine argument and we are not going to dismiss it.
But it is a forecast, not a calculation, and it should be labelled as one. The figures here hold today’s price cap rate constant precisely so you can see what is arithmetic and what is a bet. If someone’s payback figure only works with an assumed annual price rise, ask what rate they used and for how long.
What solar definitely does
Whatever the payback arithmetic says, these are not in dispute:
- It reduces the units you buy, which is a real saving against a real bill
- It is not affected by the standing charge, which you keep paying regardless
- It generates most in summer and least in winter, which is the opposite of when UK households spend most on energy
- It requires very little of you once installed — no fuel, minimal maintenance, and monitoring you can ignore
- It lasts a long time, with the inverter the component most likely to need replacing first
How to decide, in four steps
- Get your annual consumption from a bill, and your daytime pattern from honesty.
- Get three quotes, divide each by kWp, and compare with the benchmark.
- Run your own numbers in the calculator, which splits value between used and exported rather than printing a single figure.
- Check the export tariff you could actually get, in our SEG table, before assuming the headline rate.
If the answer comes out marginal, it is marginal. That is a legitimate result, and it is better to reach it before spending £6,000 than after.
Sources
- Solar photovoltaic (PV) cost data
- MGD 003: Solar PV Self-Consumption, issue 2.0 (1 April 2022) Read locally. MCS restricts reproduction, so we cite clauses and quote sparingly.
- Energy price cap unit rates and standing charges
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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